LG/WWW

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it wasn't until I left this year's LocalGovCamp, held on 29 September in Birmingham, that I realised just how much I'd missed the event and some the familiar faces I'd still been talking to online, but not seen in-person for over two years. Encouragingly there were also many for whom this year was their first, and it's their passion and new ideas help that keep LocalGovCamp alive. There were three main I took away from LocalGovCamp 2022. We're still talking about collaboration in silos: Encapsulating the problem in microcosm, there were a number of individual sessions in separate rooms asking, why can't local government collaborate and work together more.  This isn't a criticism of the event, the topics at LocalGovCamp are driven by it's attendees, but it did highlight the need for more joined up thinking round this.  That said, there are some promising signs around collaboration, but more on this later. Open ...

Today I officially stood down as Chair of the LocalGov Digital Steering Group after six years. Delivering the Local Government Service Standard, playing a part in the creation of the Government Service Standard and the Local Digital Declaration, and the membership expanding to thousands of people working in and around local government are just a few highlights of those six years. That time has also seen a huge change in the perception of digital in local government.  Necessitated by austerity and accelerated by COVID, digital is now seen as an enabler for change rather than just a medium for communication in almost every local authority. The buzz around the art of the possible has matured into wide-scale delivery and as a result I’ve seen the output of once prolific tweeters and blog posters gone to the grindstone of getting things done. To some extent that has influenced my decision, but also work-life balance, given that running LocalGov Digital involves more time on top of ...

A few years ago, after checking the website of a well known flat-pack furniture company I visited their nearest store only to find that the item I wanted was nowhere to be seen. “They only update the stock on the website every now and again” a helpful employee told me, which was however no recompense for my wasted journey. Whilst most local government services are a tad more complex than selling Billy bookcases, it’s experiences such as this I want to avoid for council service users, where people who use one channel are treated differently or are given conflicting information to others. At best it presents an impression of disorganisation and at worse it worsens the digital divide. That’s why we’re starting to roll out an omni-channel, or Many Channels, One Service approach at my place. Why “Many Channels, One Service” though? It’s easier to remember and more descriptive of its aims than “omni-channel”, and if you’re introducing new concepts and practices across an organisation, it’s m...

It’s been six months since we introduced digital tip permits so now seems like a good time for a retro. Paper tax discs have long disappeared from windscreens, and more and more people now choose to pay with parking apps instead of fumbling for small change, but up until six months ago we were still asking residents to display a paper permit every time they visited one of our tips.  Alongside this, although residents could apply for a permit online, the rest of the process after they clicked Submit was manual and there was therefore a cost to administering every application and to print and post a paper permit. With an added delay due to the snail mail, the whole process felt a bit 20th Century. So on 30 November 2021 we launched a new online tip permit. Created with our digital platform vendor we essentially allow users to search the DVLA’s database of vehicles and create a permit for up to three vehicles. The new permits were styled similarly to the old to create a sense ...